Alan Hume

I can remember being weighed on a Fokker F-27 flight from Sydney, Australia, to Norfolk Island in the South Pacific back in 1984. It was half-full of cargo under a huge cargo net at the front of the aircraft and overall weight was a critical factor as to whether the poor old F-27 would cover the distance with enough reserves in its tanks on arrival at the Island. It's a real and legitimate issue given the amount of humans that can now be accommodated, on wide-bodied aircraft especially, and the huge distances being demanded of them. I'm all for it and for a ticket cost differential too for those excessively above a "reasonable average" weight.

Doesn't look like a "crash landing" to me, but rather a very well-executed emergency landing. Here in Australia, aircraft land on paddock airstrips all the time as a matter of course. In fact being in NZ the paddock there was possibly a lot better and safer than some of the "bush strips" in Oz.

Why shouldn't the Canadians be looking at the Rafale (NOTE: not Raphael!!)? It is a very capable Gen 4.5 aircraft and largely underrated, but it is expensive too so any plans to build it in Canada should be welcome. As for the comments about the deficiencies of the F-35, we've heard them all before by the naysayers, but the pilots of the USAF and RAAF who actually are flying them say they are a "game-changer" with the their situational awareness and stand-off weapons capability such that they will rarely be called upon to engage in a dogfight. It is more likely that an opposing aircraft will be eliminated before it is even aware that the F-35 is in the area. In recent Red Shield exercises the F-35 routinely disposed of multiple attacks by F-16 "Aggressor Squadron" aircraft even when outnumbered 5-1, with no losses.

Once upon a time in Australia we would show our ticket to a hostess at the departure gate and be directed to either the front or rear stairs of a B727 (up between the rear engines), across the tarmac! Same for disembarking. Remember those days? Aaah, memories. It worked too!

Yes Trudeau. Given that eastern Canada is such a strong Francophile area, why not support your home country. Go for the Rafale. It might only be Gen 4+, but it's more than a match to the F/A-18. You could do a lot worse!

Thanks for this explanation Alex. Australia does have very dry heat in the Outback and we have just established an aircraft boneyard right in the Centre just outside Alice Springs, NT. It mirrors Arizona in atmospheric conditions.
Paul Harris from NZ, you wouldn't understand. You live in a small island nation surrounded by the ocean just like the UK, with UK weather too! i.e. wet! But at least it is beautiful and green. Not knocking it ... I love NZ, but it ain't any good for storing aircraft!

A Tu-154! Really? They've been grounded since the Dec 2016 crash that wiped out most of the Red Army Choir. And what would that achieve anyway? More likely to have been a Tu-95 Bear or its Tu-142 equivalent if it was "collecting intelligence". In any event, this was just a "sabre rattling" stunt by the Russians because they could under the terms of the Open Skies Treaty. It goes on all the time with commercial aircraft. Of course they use their satellites for serious spying. The US does the same. It's just political jousting. (BTW, I'm in Australia and we tend not to engage in these sort of shenanigans).